There is a proposal on the March ballot in Burlington to stop a pilot project on a stretch of road that reaches from the end of the Beltline to Shore Road. It is less than a mile long. The pilot project would transform the current four automobile lanes into two car lanes, a turning lane, and two bike lanes, one on either side of the road.

Bicyclists will experience a vulnerability that they have been spared until now, should the pilot project go through.

During the four-year study conducted by the task force responsible for the pilot project, there were no bike accidents on this stretch of the road.

That is not true of bikers in other parts of the state. Whether through a new sense of road ownership, or attempts by city planners to accommodate bikers in amongst cars, these bikers have suffered a series of serious accidents. In the spring of 2015, a biker lost her life after colliding with a car in Weybridge. Shortly after, a 47-year-old biker was killed in Hinesburg in a collision with a car. In July a man who ignored a truck’s right turn signal was run over by the vehicle on Pine Street in Burlington. In the fall a bicyclist was killed when he turned into the path of a car in Addison County, and in Pawlet, a man was killed by a driver who had fallen asleep at the wheel. In December a bicyclist was severely wounded after blowing through a stop sign in Winooski.

It is not improbable to think that there would be bike fatalities on North Avenue should this pilot project proceed. Automobiles are powerful machines and bikers who make inadvertent contact with them will always be the losers.

North Avenue between the end of the Beltline and Shore Road is a highly trafficked thoroughfare. Why do we want to lure more bikers into what is a dangerous situation?

The pilot project is said to be reversible. If permanent injury or death resulted from this potentially dangerous experiment there is nothing reversible about that. The city planners should not be experimenting with people’s health and certainly not with their lives.

If you walk along the beach just north of Starr Farm, look up at the bike path and notice the cliff. It has eroded so much lately. The bike path work the city did a couple of years ago by Northshore condos came out great, but it will have to continue because there are parts of the cliff that look like it is about to fall into the lake.

To do your part for bikers and their safety, why not donate to the Burlington Parks Foundation, a group that has pledged to raise $1 million to support the total rehabilitation of the beautiful Burlington bike path? Or get behind the effort to pave over the sidewalks on either side of North Avenue. These are ideas that are much less costly, not just in money, but in lives.